You got a warning. You got two. In some places in this thread you say you don't need a warning ("I actually agree with you WRT warnings, there was no particular need for one") and in other places you say that you do need a warning (that have now been updated to say that you just wanted a warning so you could identify the culprit).

You did not get a "Watch the language or *I* am going to *take away your chat privileges*" kind of warning. Would that have led to a better outcome or worse?

Personally, trying to put myself in your "shoes" at that time (which I certainly can't do since I just have a few snippets of text to infer from), I think such a warning would have sounded very condescending to me. It likely would have made me more upset. It could have easily caused me to redirect (at least for a while) my outrage at being mass-downvoted into outrage at being insulted and treated like a child by a specific person.

I find that it is a lot easier to stay mad at a person and keep up a good rant than it is to stay mad at a system.

What would have been the best outcome in this situation? Well, you seemed quite upset to me so I think the best outcome would have been for you to realize that you were upset and take a break and come back to the problem when you were better able to interact with people and perhaps get some understanding of the original cause of you being upset.

In fact, the (at least) two requests (from non-anonymous monks) for you to watch your language/attitude didn't curb your language but after being borg'ed I noticed that you used a euphamism in place of a curse word. So I don't think you were in a mood to interact civilly with identifiable people and needed a good swift kick from an anonymous system to get you to listen.

When you came back, I "listened" and waited for an indication that you were ready to communicate rather than rant (and to let other monks respond so you could get a feel for what is expected around here so it wouldn't sound like, "Hi. I'm tye. I make the rules. Obey them." and so I could get a feel for how others felt as well). I never felt like you were ready so I just kept listening and then you had left.

You lost chat privileges for a few minutes. I don't consider that a horrid "punishment" that requires a complete accounting system.

The /borg command was added to deal with trolls. I think putting an accounting system on top of it would certainly be a horrid idea in the case of trolls. In this case, I still intended to identify myself when it seemed appropriate. I had started that process in private messages before you posted this.

Would knowing that *I* took away your chat privileges for using foul language repeatedly after repeated warnings been better? I think it would have made the problem worse. But it is just a judgement. That is what I don't get paid to do.

Yes, there should be a layer of accounting so that Power Users who abuse their powers can be identified and have their powers taken away. The next layer is the gods and there are enough bread crumbs that it is pretty likely that the culprit could be found even if he didn't confess (though not 100% assured -- put that on the huge to-do list -- update: sorry, this is actually logged quite precisely, no to-do item needed).

Did I abuse my power? I don't think so. I just did what, in my judgement, was most likely to improve the situation and shorten the duration of ranting/cursing and, perhaps even help chip be able to deal with his frustration/anger (whatever it was, I try not to pin down emotion based on text-only communication because I know such is highly error-prone) sooner/better.

Did it work? I'm not sure. I see some good signs.

Would I do it again? You betchya.

If I see anyone throw out a good curse word, see someone else complain, see another curse word, personally encourage the person to calm down/take a break/watch their language, and get a curse word back, then I'm going to /borg them.

Am I going to say it was me that did it? Only if it looks to me like the person is likely to deal well with this information at that time.

My best advice is to hang out and get to know the community before you start making lots of suggestions how to change it. The less you know about the "feel" of the community, the more cautious you should be in interacting with the community.

I'll read what gets posted to this thread and I might learn something or decide that I could have done a better job in some specific way. Heck, the community might "decide" that what I did was horrible and I might decide to act differently even though I disagree (just to name a few possibilities). We'll see.

I think it was a case of an irresistible force (really just the strong will of a confident person) meeting an immovable object (an established community) and chip will likely either bounce off into space, burn up on re-entry, land and move in, or teraform the planet. We'll see. (:

Went to join the gridlock to see it
Held an eclipse party
Watched a live feed
I cn"t see tge kwubosd to amswr thus
I tried to see it, but 8000 miles of rock got in the way
What eclipse?
Wanted to see it, but they wouldn't reschedule it
Read the book instead